AM13 - Alice: Bride of Rhode Island

by Anna J. Stewart

  “Is that thing even working?” Jake leaned closer as Luke tapped on his tablet.

  Ozzy had done a miraculous job of getting the new surveillance cameras up and running, feeding live footage into a website Luke or any of his deputies could pull up on any electronic device. Heck, Luke had even found an app for it for his phone.

  He tapped open the page on his tablet and saw the shadowy, backlit image of Luke’s office reflected at them. They’d placed one of the spherical cameras over the door, but Luke could control the angle of the lens by using the remote toggle on the screen. It was currently aimed at Luke’s desk and computer.

  The silence stretched, and Luke popped open another soda.

  “You hear that?” Jake whispered.

  Luke listened to the rustling outside. “Could be an animal,” he said. But the low grunt he heard, followed by a thud and scraping along the wall, wasn’t any animal he could think of.

  Outside it went silent again.

  “Maybe he changed his mind,” Jake whispered.

  The light in the outer office flicked off as the power went out. The computers stopped humming. Even the dim blue light of the new coffeemaker blinked off. Luke’s computer, however, continued to hum thanks to the battery backup they’d installed earlier today. Luke couldn’t very well catch the kid noodling with his system if Simon couldn’t turn it on.

  Luke kept his eyes pinned on the shadow at the window. They’d purposely not repaired the lock yet, but it was on Luke’s list of things to do as soon as they put whatever this was behind them.

  The window squeaked open and a small head poked into the narrow opening. Another couple of months and Simon wouldn’t be able to pull this off. Luke almost chuckled as he watched the kid struggle to wedge himself through.

  More grunting erupted before Simon dropped through the small opening and rolled into the room. The boy clicked on a small flashlight and headed to Luke’s desk, pulling the chair under him. He squiggled the mouse around to activate the computer.

  The tap tap tap of keys told him Simon was a faster typist then he was, which was a bit of a knock to his ego. When it was obvious Simon was engrossed in what he was doing on the computer, Jake gave him a quick kick in the leg. Luke sat back as Jake pushed to his feet, walked to the office door and raised his industrial-strength flashlight. The older man shone the beam right in Simon’s shocked face.

  “Grandpa!” Simon snatched his hands off the keyboard and shoved them under his thighs as if the action would prove him innocent of any wrongdoing.

  Luke pulled out his cell and called Fletch. “Yeah, we’re done. Hit the power. Thanks.”

  The desk light buzzed on again and Luke headed to his office to flick the overhead light to blaring. “Evening, Simon.” He lounged against the door frame and felt more than a little sympathy as Simon turned fearful eyes from his grandfather to him. “You have some explaining to do.”

  * * *

  “OH, MAN, I’M getting old,” Holly murmured as she stretched and opened her eyes. Falling asleep on the couch before eight was pathetic. Thirty wasn’t supposed to be old. Thirty was supposed to be energetic and full of life, not conking out sooner than your kid, who’d managed to scarf down half a large pizza in the time it took to close down the first act of Buzbee Bunnies and the Galactic Raiders.

  Holly sat up, straightened her crooked slipshod ponytail and rubbed her eyes. “Simon?”

  He wasn’t in the living room. He had taken their plates and the leftover pizza into the kitchen, an action Holly found confusing as she trudged into the other room. He always had to be reminded to put things away.

  Only silence greeted her. “Simon?” Nerve endings she wasn’t aware of fired. She raced upstairs, flung open his door, but nothing. His room was the same disaster it had been first thing this morning. Tamping down the mounting panic, she ran downstairs, looked for his bike and found it missing from the back porch. The flashlight they kept on a hook by the door was gone as well. So were his house keys.

  She pulled open the door and yelled his name, not caring one bit if the neighbors heard. In fact, she’d prefer they did hear, so she could ask if they’d seen him. Grabbing a sweatshirt, her purse and keys, she hurried to the front door.

  The phone rang.

  Cursing, she dropped her things and plunged into the kitchen, yanking the receiver off the wall. “Simon?”

  “He’s fine.” Luke’s statement had her sagging in relief. She slid down the wall, pressing a hand against her heart as she caught her breath. “Holly? You okay?”

  “Where is he?” she whispered.

  “With your father and me. At the police station.”

  “At the where?” A new pool of dread formed in the pit of her stomach. A thousand questions exploded in her brain at once, but none of them were coherent enough to be voiced. “Never mind. I’m on my way.”

  * * *

  “IS SHE MAD?” Simon asked after Luke ended his call to Holly.

  “Your mother sounded scared.” He wasn’t about to coddle Simon, not when he needed to be jolted out of his increasingly dangerous behavior. “You didn’t leave a note in case she woke up, did you?”

  Simon shook his head, avoiding his grandfather’s stare like the plague. “I thought I’d be back before she did. She usually stays asleep.”

  The kid figured he’d covered all the angles; his attention to detail was both baffling and sobering. Reckless, it occurred to him...just like another eager young man Luke was familiar with.

  “She wasn’t crying, was she?” That idea must have put a chink in Simon’s armor. He sat forward in Luke’s chair, hands gripping the armrest so tight his knuckles went white. “I don’t like it when Mom cries.”

  “You should have considered that before you went gallivanting on your own after dark,” Jake said.

  “Gala-what?” Simon’s face scrunched up in the way Luke identified as the boy absorbing new information.

  “Look it up.” Jake clomped off. “I need some coffee. That fancy new machine of yours easy to work?”

  “Pop in a pod, put a mug under the spout, push Brew.” Luke watched Jake limp out of the room. “So.” He walked over and sat on the edge of his desk facing Simon, resisting the urge to let the little guy off the hook and give him a hug. Ignoring what he’d done wasn’t going to teach Simon what he needed to learn. “Looks as if you’re in hot water this time.”

  “I wasn’t going to hurt anything.” Simon dug his finger into a crack in the chair cushion.

  Luke stared at him.

  Simon sighed. “This time.”

  “We lost some important emails thanks to that malware you installed, Simon.” Luke wasn’t going to cut him any slack. If he was old enough to commit the crime, he was old enough to be told the truth about the consequences of his actions. “Alerts about missing kids, escaped criminals. Law enforcement reports that help us do our job and keep people like you and your mom safe.” Yes, they’d retrieved them, but Simon didn’t need to know that.

  “I just...” Simon shrugged his shoulders. “I was just so mad. I wanted you to go away.” He ducked his head and stabbed his thumb deeper into the padding.

  “And you thought hacking our computers, destroying our coffee machine and locking us out of the office was the way?”

  “It was a start?” There was an odd hopeful light in Simon’s eyes as he peered at Luke and cringed.

  He would not laugh. But the desire to haul the kid into his arms and hug the stuffing out of him returned full force. Criminal tendencies aside, there was so much potential in this little boy, so much energy needing to be focused in the right way. But how to do that and keep an emotional distance was the question.

  “So what?” Luke persisted. “You wanted to make my life miserable here so I’d leave?”

  “Yeah.”
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  “And then your grandpa would get his job back and everything would return to how it used to be.” How many times had Luke wished the same thing himself? That he’d never gotten into that car that night. That he hadn’t had that first drink. The list went on and on.

  Simon nodded, but there was a glimmer in his eyes, as if he hadn’t expected Luke to understand his intentions.

  “Mom was so angry when you came here,” Simon said. “I’d never seen her like that, then I heard her talk about how you hurt Grandpa, and I wanted you to hurt.”

  Try as he might, Luke couldn’t blame Simon for what he’d done. If anything, it made the boy’s actions all the more admirable, if not misguided. “I bet reading all those superhero comic books made tricks and revenge look pretty fun.”

  That spark ignited again. “They get to help people and stop them from feeling bad. People are so mean sometimes it makes me want to make them be nice.”

  “And I was someone else who was hurting people you care about.” Luke nodded. “You know what, Simon? I might have done the same thing in your shoes.”

  “You would?” Awe and wonder shining in the boy’s eyes made Luke recall Simon’s father.

  “Before I knew better, sure.” Luke slid off the desk and bent down beside Holly’s son. “Not a day goes by I don’t think about what happened the night I crashed my car into your grandpa’s. It’s like a scar, up here.” He tapped the side of his head. “It won’t ever go away because I know how much pain I caused both him and your mom. It doesn’t matter how much I apologize—nothing can ever make up for the choice I made. But now that I think about it, I never apologized to you directly. And I should have.”

  “Why to me?” Simon’s face twisted.

  “Because I hurt people you love, people you only want to protect and defend. But, Simon.” He patted the boy’s arm. “You can’t bend the rules and break the law because you think you know better. That’s only going to make things worse for you in the long run. Stop you from doing what you need to do.”

  “You mean like getting into my new school?”

  “Exactly. What do you think they’d do if they knew what you’d been up to tonight?”

  “They wouldn’t want me anymore.” His chin wobbled, not a lot, but enough to prove to Luke he was getting through.

  “You want to go there, don’t you?”

  Simon nodded. “It’s gonna be so cool, Sheriff. All their computers and classes. I’m going to join the engineering club, so I can learn to build things. I can take what I want to take and you know what the best part is? No homework! Everything gets done in the classroom. I’ll just be there longer.”

  Giving Holly even more of a break. All the more reason to make sure Simon was admitted.

  “But if they find out about all this, you can’t go there,” Luke said. “And all the money your mom’s borrowed to pay for your school, she’d still have to pay it all back. Did you know that?”

  Simon shook his head.

  “You know what I think? I think you’re so determined to help other people, you don’t consider the consequences of your actions if you get caught. Because you haven’t been caught before, have you?”

  “He’s been caught,” Holly said from the doorway, her father behind her. Luke rose, the strain on Holly’s face making Luke second-guess his decision not to give her a heads-up. She aimed angry eyes on her son. “Your grandfather filled me in on what you’ve been up to, young man.”

  Luke looked between mother and son, his heart stuttering. There was anger, yes, but there was nothing but love radiating between the two of them. There wouldn’t be any fists flying or glass breaking or raised voices. There would be talking and punishment and actions to be taken, but at the end, Simon and Holly would be better for it.

  Luke cleared his throat. “In Simon’s defense—”

  “In his what?” Holly glared at Luke. “You cannot be serious. He broke into your office twice in as many days. He hacked your computer, installed a virus, did who knows what to that poor coffeemaker...”

  “He was trying to fix what he’d done,” Luke explained. “He knew he made a mistake. Right, Simon?”

  “Right.” Wide eyes stared up at him.

  “I’m sure we understand each other a little better now,” Luke added. “And I doubt Simon’s going to be venturing out on any more vendettas anytime soon.”

  “No, sir.” Simon’s vehement agreement had Luke’s lips twitching.

  “You’re letting him off the hook?” Holly gaped at Luke.

  “I am not.”

  “You’re not?” Simon’s face fell.

  “Once your mother has her say, you and I will sit down and come to an arrangement concerning your punishment. In exchange for keeping what happened here yesterday and tonight off any public record.”

  He heard Holly let out a broken sigh. When he looked back at her she’d covered her mouth and aimed such a look of gratitude at him he squashed the urge to squirm. She held out her hand. “Simon, come here, please.”

  Simon jumped down from Luke’s chair and circled around his desk to stand in front of his mother. She gripped his arms and held him hard. “You frightened the life out of me, you realize that?” She blinked back tears, something Luke knew would only hit the emotional target on her son. “When I woke up and you weren’t there, I thought something horrible had happened to you.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I was just so mad, but I wanted to be able to work with Grandpa and Sheriff Saxon on the new youth center.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” She looked between Luke and her father.

  “We might have mentioned over breakfast anyone coming to the center needed to have been on the straight and narrow,” Jake said as he carried his coffee into the office and took a seat on the sofa.

  “Over...breakfast.” Holly’s eyes turned fierce. “You set him up.”

  “Huh?” Simon spun toward his grandfather then whirled on Luke. “You did?” Was that admiration on his face?

  “We created an opportunity Simon did not have to take,” Luke asserted, determined not to relinquish control. “Simon now knows if he has a problem with me, he can come and talk to me about it, man-to-man. Right, Simon?” He angled the boy the kind of look he’d seen Jake use on occasion.

  “I wanted to make him go away,” Simon admitted. “Because he made you sad. And he made Grandpa sad by taking his job.”

  “Oh, Simon.” The tone she used made Luke realize she’d been waiting for him to strike out.

  “I was never mad at Luke, Simon,” Jake said, sipping his coffee. “He made a mistake a very long time ago. One with serious consequences. More serious than what you’re facing, but because of it, a lot of lives were changed. Including mine and your mother’s. But never once was I mad at Luke. If I was, I wouldn’t have kept tabs on him all these years. You helped me with that, Simon. By teaching me how to do those internet searches.”

  “That’s what we were doing?” Simon asked.

  “That’s what we were doing.” Jake nodded. “Now, Holly, I think you and Simon should head home. There’s a conversation the two of you need to have, and Luke and I have a window lock to replace. Simon?”

  “Yes, sir?” Simon squirmed tighter against his mother.

  “No more of these shenanigans, you hear me?”

  Simon nodded after a brief hesitation, something Luke made note of for the future. It wasn’t going to be like flipping a switch and there wasn’t any way Simon hadn’t already been percolating other ideas.

  “You need to be taking care of your mom, not upsetting her or scaring her to death,” Jake added.

  “I’ll walk the two of you out,” Luke said, heading over to the door.

  “Thank you, Luke.” Holly’s gaze didn’t meet his for more than a second, as if she
was both ashamed and embarrassed Simon’s behavior had gotten so out of her control. And all because she hadn’t been able to let go of her anger over something a teenage boy had done years before. “I appreciate you keeping this among us.”

  “Not a problem. It’s tough having a superhero for a kid. But you’ve got a support system.” He’d committed himself to many things—changing his life, swearing loyalty to his country, serving on the police force—but he’d never committed himself to another person in any way. Until now. Because Holly—and Simon—were worth the risk. “Whatever you need, Holly, anytime you need it. You just let me know.”

  * * *

  HOLLY STARED UP at the water stain on her bedroom ceiling. Any hope of more sleep had evaporated hours ago when she’d awoken to an empty house and a renegade, runaway child.

  She flopped her arms on the mattress, repressed the urge to scream. How had she missed it? She’d kept an eye on Simon for what felt like 24/7 and her son had still managed to risk his entire future with two break-ins in the space of two days.

  Of all the records for him to attempt to break.

  Holly rolled onto her side, hugged the second pillow against her chest as she squeezed her eyes shut. Never in her wildest imagination could she have imagined Luke Saxon saving the day. Saving her son. But he had. He’d protected Simon’s future, promised to help her when she needed it.

  She couldn’t lock Simon in his room, but she knew she only had to ask and Simon would be kept under the watchful eye of local law enforcement. Until tonight, she hadn’t understood her father’s soft spot for Luke. The way Luke had been with her son—compassionate, firm, resolute—had shown the person Jake had believed him to be all those years ago.

  Something she’d never allowed herself to see given her anger.

  The questions continued to whirl in her mind; she wanted to know more, to know everything her father had alluded to when it came to Luke’s past, but there had been enough drama for one night. But tomorrow...

  “Mom?” Simon knocked on her door. “Are you asleep?”

  Was he serious? “Come on in.” She reached over and flicked on the light, but remained where she was—prone, exhausted and so wired she may as well have been mainlining coffee for the past day and a half. Simon pushed the door open, dressed in his Proton Patrol pajamas, his hair tousled as if he’d had as much trouble getting to sleep as she did. She glanced at the clock. “It’s after midnight, bud.”